The ability to read is among our most vital survival skills. But deciding how we learn to read has divided educators, parents and scholars for more than a century. Today, what decades ago was dubbed the “Great Debate” is reheating. A movement of mostly conservative critics of public schools is pushing for a return to instruction in phonics, which enables readers to decode unfamiliar words by sounding them out using sound-letter relationships. They decry the “whole- language” method - favored by many teachers and professional reading associations - which plunges readers directly into real stories and words. All agree that phonics has some role, but they disagree over what it should be. Meanwhile, both camps regret that a basic academic and family issue has become politicized.